About 200 people attended a ceremony in Williamstown on Sunday, commemorating Ireland’s Great Famine of 1845-52 and the arrival of the Irish famine orphans in Australia.
One million people died in the famine and, out of a population of eight million, at least a million emigrated to Australia from 1845.
Organiser Debra Vaughan, pictured with Irish historian Dr Val Noone, said interest in the famine and the orphans was growing each year.
One of Ms Vaughan’s ancestors features on a coastal bay trail marker at Williamstown’s memorial famine rock, located near the corner of Stevedore Street and the Strand.
“My Limerick great-great-grandmother, Sarah O’Malley, arrived via Pemberton in 1849,” Ms Vaughan said.
“Engaged by James Allison, clerk of courts and postmaster of Portland, afterwards she worked for the Hentys, before she married Richard Smith in 1850. From workhouse penury, by spotting the first whale of the season she earned a cash bounty and a silk dress.
“A seamstress, she had six children, two born on the Bendigo goldfields.
“She settled in Yarpturk, on the fringe of Australia’s densest Irish settlement in the western district’s green triangle.”
